jozif - Balance presents jozif

jozif - Balance presents jozif
When you ask a DJ what the idea behind his mix was, the stock response is usually along the lines of "to make something you can listen to at home or in the car." The results, however, seldom seem that different from your average club set. Not so with jozif, here kicking off a new Balance series with an unmistakably sofa-focussed session. And that's not really a surprise given his records on labels like Wolf + Lamb and Culprit; the Londoner's music is almost too sweet and melodically poignant to be played in a grotty club in the dead of night.

This is actually the second version of the mix—jozif redid it following the sad passing of Martin Dawson. "I didn't think it was right to put out such an upbeat mix when such an awful thing had happened" he says in the accompanying press notes. The tempos are slowed, and there's a lingering sense of sadness, both explicitly—the still great-sounding Steffi cut "Sadness" makes an appearance—but also more implicitly in the pained and bleary-eyed chords of tracks like Burnin' Tears' "Got A Reason."

The same painstakingly programmed melodies, golden string sweeps and delicate piano keys that mark much of jozif's work litter the first half of this mix, elevating tracks like Lake Powell's mopey "More Or Less" to ruefully emotive highs. Rather than wallowing too long, though, Silicone Soul's downbeat robot romance "One Thing" marks a subtle shift toward slightly more upright beats, and the rest of the mix takes you to a cautiously optimistic place, with help from Ian Pooley's sun-frazzled "CompuRhythm" and a brace of new, typically lush and low-slung house burners from jozif himself. Balance presents jozif feels like a very honest personal story.

More on jozif

After breaking through with - what are still - standout releases on labels like Wolf + Lamb, Mobilee & Ministry of Sound back in 2010, alongside an RA podcast that comprised solely of re-writes, edits and productions....
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